Sunday, October 30, 2005

She based her claims on the so-called polls and exit polls, while ignoring actual hard evidence presented by the opposition and the mainstream media na ninakaw ni Arroyo ang eleksyon:

1. Voter preferences in the run-up to the 2004 elections, as recorded by the Social Weather Stations (SWS), which conducted polls every two weeks since the start of the campaign period, showed that while at the beginning (Jan. 16-28) the lead of Fernando Poe Jr. over Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was almost 10 percentage points (36.3 percent vs. 26.5 percent), this was whittled down so that a month later, they were running neck-and-neck, and this continued into March. By the second week of April, the polls showed Ms Arroyo ahead by almost five percentage points (35.3 percent vs. 30.8 percent), although this was not statistically significant (i.e., it still could go either way). But by the week before the elections (May 1-4), Ms Arroyo’s lead over Poe was significant (37 percent vs. 30 percent).

The other major polling organization, Pulse Asia, also noted the same trend, although its polls were taken at slightly different time periods: an increasing trend for Ms Arroyo and decreasing trend for Poe. Its last poll, conducted from April 26-29, showed Ms Arroyo leading, 37 percent vs. 31 percent.

Note that a six-point lead in voter preferences, if translated into actual votes, would imply a difference of 2.0-2.5 million votes between the two candidates, depending on whether we use total votes cast or total registered voters as base.

SWS and Pulse are not as independent as Winnie Monsod would like her readers to believe. In fact, the top three major polling organization (SWS, Pulse and NFO Trends) have one thing in common: Mercy Abad.

Mercy Abad, who heads NFO Trends, does all the data gathering and polling legwork for SWS and Pulse too.

Scary ano?

You'd think that these different survey groups like the prestigious SWS and Pulse would have their OWN people conducting interviews and collect data just like ANY OTHER SURVEY GROUPS in the world like Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen, FOXNEWS.

It is believed that Malacanang operators have infiltrated SWS and Pulse thru NFO Trends to skew the results in the polls to favor Mrs. Arroyo.

And not all polls before the elections showed GMA winning. Yung Ibon surveys conducted before (released apr 30, 2004) and after the elections indicated an FPJ victory. And guess what, they didn't rely on Mercy Abad to do polling work for them. ;)

2. Exit polls conducted on election day itself by at least three media organizations (although only one of them may have used acceptable polling methods) validated the run-up polls. All of them showed Ms Arroyo as the winner.

Winnie Monsod is wrong again. Not all exit polls showed GMA winning. And the only polling firm that used acceptable polling methods, SWS, was involved in a major screwup in it's exit poll numbers in Metro Manila.

THE PRESIDENT of the Social Weather Stations, Mahar Mangahas, acknowledged Saturday that the private polling group made some errors in the exit polls it conducted during the May 10 elections.

SWS erred in declaring that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had won in Metro Manila and Southern Mindanao when it was opposition candidate Fernando Poe Jr. who carried these regions, said Mangahas who spoke at an election postmortem forum sponsored by the Kilosbayan civil society group Saturday.

SWS also erred in saying that Poe had won in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) when the official count showed otherwise, he said.

But he noted that the results of the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections quick count also showed that Poe had won in ARMM, contrary to the official count.

"We are very unhappy about this. I myself don't know for sure what happened. I would also like to know,'' Mangahas said.

Mangahas said a seven-man independent committee has been created to review the conduct of the exit polls and identify the factors that led to the erroneous results.

He said it was NFO Trends, a market research organization, that conducted the exit poll interviews. The SWS interpreted the data collected and the results were broadcast by ABS-CBN television, which commissioned the exit poll as part of its election coverage.

NFO Trends na naman???

One reason why SWS/NFO got their results wrong in Metro Manila, but got it "right" in other areas was because Malacanang's cheating operators couldn't get anything done in Metro Manila, because the voting there was closely monitored by party reps and the media. Here, I'll let Ellen Tordesillas explain:

Sources said, long before election day, Arroyo and her operatives had decided by how much she should win. They couldn’t make it too big because it would be unbelievable. But it had to be over a million votes.

A source close to the Arroyo campaign said they had in mind the doubt that had haunted Fidel Ramos because of his unconvincing margin of a little more than 850,000 over Miriam Santiago in 1992. It’s interesting to note that the person who operated for Ramos in 1992 was with Arroyo in 2004.

After Arroyo’s operatives had taken care of the surveys, which helped condition the public’s mind to an Arroyo victory, it was then the job of former Comelec Commissioner and his gang to make sure that the election results supported the exit poll figures. The problem was, in Manila, where party representatives and media watched closely, Arroyo’s co-conspirators couldn’t do much. They had to get the needed numbers in other areas.

Former Senator John Osmeña, who ran under Arroyo’s ticket in the 2004 elections, is now saying that she could not have won by over one million votes in Cebu, his province. He said based on the study he commissioned in connection with his electoral protest, Arroyo won only by about 621,000 over FPJ.

Mindanao was Arroyo’s hope to get the numbers she wanted, never mind if actual votes cast didn’t support them or if the figures reflected in the certificate of canvass were more than the number of registered voters.

That’s the meaning of her famous conversation with Garcillano in the morning of May 29, 2004 where she asked "I will still lead by more than one M overall? … It cannot be less than one M?" To which Garcillano replied, "Pipilitin Ma’am natin yan. (We will force that ma’am.)

Read the whole thing.

And finally, this from:

3. The final official congressional canvass showed Ms Arroyo getting 40 percent of the votes cast, while Poe got 36.5 percent (a difference of 1.1 million votes), while the Namfrel Quick Count, based on 83 percent of total precincts (the election watchdog group Namfrel was not present in all precincts), showed Ms Arroyo with 39.4 percent and Poe with 36.8 percent (a difference of 700,000 votes).

What is more, other circumstances obtaining during the campaign period support the conclusion that it is the claim of “illegitimacy” that is a lie: after all, her coalition party, K4, won 58 percent of senatorial seats, 87 percent of congressional seats, 85 percent of gubernatorial slots, 87 percent of city mayor seats, and 85 percent of all mayor seats. Either they carried her or she carried them, or there was some combination of both.

So I don't take seriously those numbers where 87 percent of congressional seats and 85% of gubernatorial slots were won by arroyo's party. Kasi kung si erap pa rin ang presidente noong 2004 at hindi nag-away sila singson at estrada, singson (if he ran) and atienza would still win, but under the erap administration's coalition party naman.

Hitler propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels' famous observation “If you repeat a lie often enough, it will eventually be accepted as truth” has now been invoked in support of the proposition that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was the victor in the 2004 elections.

Mrs. Arroyo really won over Fernando Poe Jr., it is being claimed, but if the outcome of the elections is continually presented as a victory for Mr. Poe, eventually the public will accept Mrs. Arroyo's defeat as fact.

To support the claim that Gloria Arroyo really won the 2004 elections, (1) the results of opinion surveys taken just before the elections, (2) the results of the exit polls taken by the conductors of the pre-election surveys, (3) the outcome of the National Board of Canvassers canvass of the presidential vote, (4) the pro-Arroyo sentiments of most of the winning candidates for congressional and local positions and (5) the post-election statements of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) secretary general have been presented.

With all these positive pre-election and post-election factors in her favor, how, it is being asked, can Mrs. Arroyo be said to have lost the elections?

Let's examine these supposedly pro-Arroyo factors one by one. First, let's take the CBCP and Namfrel statements. What did the bishops and secretary general Guillermo Luz actually say about the manner in which the 2004 elections was conducted. Did they say that they knew for certain that the elections was not attended by organized and massive cheating? Of course not. All that the bishops said in their July 11, 2004 statement was “massive fraud in the conduct of the elections (was not observed) by each bishop and the volunteers so as to have affected substantially the results of the elections.” Mr. Luz stated he “didn't see enough electoral anomalies at the national level to have a material effect on the national results.”

Considering that the kind of cheating that “substantially” or “materially” affects national-level electoral results takes place not in the precincts but in the offices of municipal and provincial treasurers, what else could Mr. Luz and the bishops have been expected to say? To have expected them to say more than they did would have been the height of naivete.

Next let's take a look at the connection that has been sought to be established between the outcome of the presidential contest and the victory of a multitude of pro-Arroyo candidates for congressional seats and local positions. Anyone who believes that victory for a pro-Arroyo congressional or local position necessarily translates into victory for Mrs. Arroyo only has to remember the experiences of Ramon Mitra in 1992 and Jose de Venecia Jr. in 1998. Most of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) and Rainbow Coalition candidates whom Mr. Mitra and Mr. De Venecia had nurtured and pampered during their respective time as Speakers emerged victorious while the two House of Representatives chiefs went down in defeat. A person who thinks that a strong congressional or local candidate automatically carries his presidential candidate to victory with him should ask Mr. De Venecia what he thinks of that notion.

We come next to those exit polls. After the outcome of the Metro Manila exit polls, I can't for the life of me understand how anyone can seriously offer the May 10, 2004 exit polls to support a claim that Mrs. Arroyo beat FPJ.

The Metro Manila exit polls indicated that Gloria Arroyo defeated the late movie icon in all of the 14 cities and three municipalities that make up this country's premiere metropolis. But when the final results were in, the little woman from Lubao had won in only one Metro Manila component — administration Sen. Manuel Villar's Las Piñas City, and then by only around 1,000 votes. Eggs-it polls was what the 2004 exit polls were more like.

That leaves us with only the much-touted pre-election opinion surveys. These showed Gloria Arroyo to be progressively closing in on FPJ's lead and overtaking the nation's No. 1 actor just before the elections (GMA 37 percent and FPJ 31 percent in the April 26-29 survey). To drive the point home, it is pointed out that a six-point survey lead translated into a margin of between 2 million and 2.5 million votes, depending on whether the base used was total registered voters or total votes cast.

To anyone who claims that pre-election opinion survey leads necessarily spell victory on Election Day, I commend a look back to the US presidential election of 1948. That election, it will be recalled, was contested by the incumbent Harry Truman, who was serving out the late Franklin Roosevelt's fourth term, and the popular and tough Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey. All the pre-election polls showed Mr. Dewey to be pulling away from Mr. Truman so steadily that the outcome of the election seemed to be a foregone conclusion. Indeed, the Chicago Tribune, in a didn't-get-to-see-print banner headline, proclaimed “Dewey Wins.” Yet, when the vote tallies were in, the former senator from Missouri had trounced his Republican opponent. For Thomas Dewey, read Gloria Arroyo.

Back to Joseph Goebbels. The Nazi propaganda chief's famous statement is entirely inapplicable to the outcome of the 2004 elections because Herr Goebbels was speaking of the continuous repetition of an outright lie until it gets to be accepted as truth. He did not contemplate a situation in which (1) an incumbent Chief Executive is caught on tape talking to a Commission on Elections official 15 times during the immediate post-election period, (2) they talk about adding one million votes to the candidate's vote total, (3) she says “I am sorry” for having spoken to an election official, (4) she thwarts all attempts to get her to say if the female voice on the tape is in fact hers and (5) the election official in question disappears without a trace. This is not a Goebbels-type situation. Continued repetition hasn't led to acceptance as truth, for from the day of its disclosure the Filipino people had accepted the “Hello, Garci” tape as representing the truth.